These are the pages of my book Mapping Shakespeare’s Tragedies: King Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, which was included in the show, The Book’s the Thing: Shakespeare from Stage to Page, at the New Mexico History Museum from February 5 to 28, 2016. Each page is a map showing where a particular tragedy took place, with geographic elements and the movements of all the principals. I read all the plays, and did a lot of research of old maps from Shakespeare’s time. The book is a drum-leaf binding with watercolor and ink on watercolor paper. It measures 15″ high, 12″ wide and 3/4″ deep. The pages measure 15″x24″.

I will be showing two books in the Exhibition of Handmade Artists Books at the New Mexico Capitol Rotunda Gallery in Santa Fe. The opening reception will be Friday, September 18, from 4-6 pm, and the show will run through December 11. Here is a link to an article in the Journal North: http://www.abqjournal.com/639019/entertainment/headline-395.html The first book is “Swimming Upstream” , acrylic ink and hand-carved rubber stamps on paper, and the second is “In the Bosque: Night and Day”, acrylic ink on paper. Both are interwoven split concertinas and are 8 1/4″ high and 22″ long when opened out.

Yesterday I installed one of my working journals in the “Book of the Month” case at the Taos Community Auditorium in Taos, NM. I make my own journals so I can create the size I want, with the paper I like. They are Coptic-bound (an intricate bookmakers stitch that allows a book to lie flat when opened, making it easier to work with).
My journals are a place to unload my brain…a place to store sketches, ideas, quotes I like, research and sources of inspiration for future work. If I’m working for a show in a specific venue, I often go to the space and make a plat of floors and walls to use for planning the installation. Link to the TCA site: http://tcataos.org/calendar/view_by_cat/2#top

Here are two new hanging boats. “Comock’s Umiak” was included in “Pulp” in March and April at the Santa Fe Community Gallery, and “Adrift in the Great Unknown” will be included in “Parch” at the Open Space Gallery in Albuquerque, beginning October 3rd. They are both constructed with a framework of willow sticks, covered with ink drawings on handmade Japanese paper.

I am so pleased my book “House of Cards: Plaza Blanca” was chosen to be the Book of the Month, to be displayed in the Taos Community Auditorium, September 29-November 20, 2014.

The Book of the Month is a collaboration between the Taos Center for the Arts and the Taos Book Arts Group. Each month a new work of art is on display in the Encore Gallery. Artists in the Book Arts Group experiment with a wide range of readily available materials and simple techniques to develop creative narratives. Sometimes they bear little resemblance to the codex book form that is most familiar to all of us, yet they share with all books sequence and narrative.

My book is titled “Plaza Blanca: House of Cards”. It is a piece about the White Place, or Plaza Blanca, in Abiquiu and is based on a child’s game, “A House of Cards.” I see it in relation to the White Place and the way it is always eroding and changing, how portions of the cliff fall down, rocks weather, and water carves out the arroyos. It is never the same from one season to the next.

I started with two large ink drawings done on site at Plaza Blanca. I then wrote the text of a poem entitled ‘Echo Amphitheater’ by Renee Gregorio on the back. I cut the drawings into 72 cards, ran them through a laminator and then cut slots in them. They can be assembled in an infinite number of ways. There is no right or wrong structure.

Yesterday I went to Abiquiu and fished my water log of the Rio Chama out of the river. It had been soaking in the water for about three weeks. The tether had gotten snagged on some sticks and the book was totally submerged and beautifully encrusted with mud. After going into the water and searching under the muck, I found the book and unraveled it from the sticks. The interior of the book is pages of maps and logs of the Rio Chama. I want hints of the content to show, but I am planning on keeping the book “bound”. Here is the book in the water, and the finished book.

The show at the Abiquiu Inn is up, and I am pleased with how it looks. I have envisioned my work in that space for a long time, and it was gratifying to see it become a reality. The opening was wonderful. I got to visit with many old friends and share entertaining and enlightening conversations. Here are some images from the show:

These are part of a series of ink drawings done with sticks and sumi ink on 30″x 20″ Fabriano Artistico HP paper. They are based on macro and micro images of the natural world: the flow of water, air, and the structure of cells, rocks and plants. They are some of the work I will be showing in my show at the Galeria Arriba at the Abiquiu Inn for the month of June.

These ten digital prints were made on an Epson scanner. I placed ten separate objects on the scanner and scanned the result. I then removed one of the objects, rearranged the rest, and scanned again. I continued to replace the … Continue reading →